Thursday, November 1, 2012

Comedy should be taken seriously.

How many times have you heard the words: "Stop whining. Let's just relax and enjoy the show"? I don't know about you, but I've heard those words too many times. Way too many times.

"Lighten up, don't be so serious, this stuff is hilarious". If only it could work that way. If only it could...

"But but but, it's better than 90% what's on tv..." No, no, no.

There are too many shows currently on tv that aren't funny. Critics might recommend these shows and posters on message boards might be extatic over these, and yet the simple truth is that these shows are so bad that I can't relax and enjoy them.

No matter how many people might say otherwise..

For example, a show like 'New Girl' might be popular, but it's not funny because it's so implausible. It seems that no one paid attention - was serious enough - about the premise, characters and the storylines when they came up with the show.

Who thought that a weirdo girl living with three dudes in a high-end apartment would be plausible as a premise? Who thought that these shallow, empty characters would be relatable? Who thought that their non-existent problems would be interesting to the audience?

Probably no-one said, 'let's be serious for a moment'. I wonder what the executives were thinking. Did they think that people like me would like it? I hope they didn't say "this is going to be great".

The problem is that if you don't take comedy seriously, you can't help but to fail. There's no way you're going to create anything meaningful just by doing something half-baked and expecting it to work like magic.

It can only work if there's some serious thinking involved in the process. Even then it might not work, but at least there's a chance. Then I might enjoy it and relax.

When I take a look at a show like New Girl, I can only compare it to Ally Mcbeal. Because New Girl tries to be quirky like Ally, but it doesn't work at all because there's nothing whatsoever to build on. 

Ally Mcbeal worked because it was a serious and even a sad show at its core. It dealt with honest emotions. Even though the show sometimes was pretty absurd, it worked because David Kelley took his job seriously and treated his characters with honor and dignity.

New Girl, however, doesn't. I can't enjoy it, because too many people simply didn't do their jobs.

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